The American left has been drifting into authoritarianism

[TheEncogitationer]

Fellow Unbelievers,

If anyone is blocking a thoroughfare meant for travel and commerce, I’m all for clearing the way, and truckers would do better simply displaying banners and signs on their moving trucks and spreading the word via CB, pirate radio, and the Internet.

But the biggest culprits in this department of blocking traffic has been the Canadian Government lock8ng down public life and requiring a two-week quarantine for people crossing the border without the vaccine.

Also, there is simply no comparison between the Canadian truckers and U.S. Antifa/BLM/Wokesters who in the past 2 years have destroyed $1-2 Billion in property and inflicted 19+ deaths. And there is much more ancillary damage and death caused by reaction from policies to defund the police and pull back police from their legitimate role of protecting Life, Liberty, and Property.

Rotten apples and Molotov Cocktails, I say.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by TheEncogitationer. Reason: Spelling and spacing

[Unseen]

@Autumn & Davis

Okay, okay. I’m hard to convince, but I’m rational. LOL

[—]

The two-week quarantine measure is applicable on both sides of the border, so even if Canada removed it, nothing would change for the minority of truckers who don’t want to get vaccinated. Travel quarantines are not a new measure, neither are vocational vaccination requirements. Lockdowns are provincial/ territorial measures and not a matter of federal jurisdiction.

Many Canadians like to compare our covid response to the generally weaker measures enacted in the US, but the reality is, we’ve had better numbers. It’s possible this is due to other variables, but as it stands, we’ve had about 1/3 the mortality rate, and when Omicron hit, we had about half the rate of new infections (and this was at a time when restaurants, bars, and entertainment establishments were open).

I don’t really know why you’d compare BLM in America to the convoy in Canada. There are quite a few differences between Canada and the US that make comparison quite difficult. Thus far the police haven’t killed anyone, counter protestors haven’t shot anyone or driven cars through swarms of protestors. Protestors haven’t shot anyone. Possibly unrelated violent crimes haven’t been committed in the protest area as far as I know. Protestors haven’t been given that much opportunity to clash with police until recently, and even then, it largely appears police have been restrained in their approach, though I haven’t been present so I can’t say for certain.

BLM protests in Canada have largely been peaceful and haven’t had near the same detrimental impact as the convoys. The convoys have cost a lot of money in trade, lost revenues, and increased police expenditures. The Rideau Centre alone estimated losses of $19 million, and that was two weeks ago, so that number has surely increased. Estimates for the border blockades went from around $390-500 million per day in lost trade and companies forced to idle as supply chain was blocked. Though I feel that figure is little misleading, the price tag has definitely been high.

[_Robert_]

Also, there is simply no comparison between the Canadian truckers and U.S. Antifa/BLM/Wokesters

You got that right. The snowflake anti-vaxxers protesting the “horrors” of a statistically safe and effective vaccine that has saved millions of lives already vs the routine murder and racially motivated, hateful persecution of blacks by police. And that is just one manifestation of the systemic sickness.

[—]

_Robert_ wrote:

Also, there is simply no comparison between the Canadian truckers and U.S. Antifa/BLM/Wokesters

You got that right. The snowflake anti-vaxxers protesting the “horrors” of a statistically safe and effective vaccine that has saved millions of lives already vs the routine murder and racially motivated, hateful persecution of blacks by police. And that is just one manifestation of the systemic sickness.

Timelines are also quite different. We’re just hitting two years of anti-Covid measures, and the vaccine mandate that supposedly kicked off this particular protest was only put into effect mid-January of this year. The fight against institutionalized and systemic racial violence in the US (and Canada) has been going on… longer.

[Davis]

I am referring to an indigenous rights and BLM protest in Ottawa where the same police that mostly ignored (or even fist bumped) white male conservative protesters for the first weeks (so called freedom convoy) arrested marginalised protestors when they went outside the mandate of their protest. Very quickly and unapologetically. They were not violent, but were in theory breaking the law. Still arrested. So yeah, while a non threatening group of marginalised people were perceived as threatening to Ottawa police, they deemed a convoy of pissed off white truckers of whom some outright said they were heading to have the government replaced…were either non-threatening or simply less worth their time. In other words…typical western racial bias.

[TheEncogitationer]

Fellow Unbelievers,

There is yet another consideration to be made here: All losses in trade are immediately undone the moment trucks can move freely across the borders. *

By contrast, when patches of cities are destroyed by looting, arson, and rioting, very often they never come back, and certainly never to the extent they once did.

There are portions of cities all over the U.S. that never came back after the riots of 1968 and portions of Los Angeles that got a double dose of destruction in the 1992 riots. And in all cases, the biggest victims are typically the very marginalized people the Woke rhapsodize so.

And to add to the losses from riots over the last two years, there’s that little matter of $60 Million Dollars of Black Lives Matter funds totally unaccounted for, which could have freed a lot of wrongly incarcerated people and helped campaigns for legitimate police reform.

* (And make no mistake: If you didn’t manufacture it yourself, it came from a store. And if it came from a store, it came from a truck. You don’t have to agree with anyone politically or religiously, but give wide berth to trucks and the humans who drive them.

And until EVs can carry 50 tons of freight and have charger stations on every corner and adequate utilities to recharge them and more safe disposal space for heavy metal dead batteries, it’s best to keep the EVs on the golf course.)

[—]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

Fellow Unbelievers, There is yet another consideration to be made here: All losses in trade are immediately undone the moment trucks can move freely across the borders.

Sadly, they aren’t. The delays didn’t just limit the time it took for goods to ship. It resulted in idling factories and other places of business. Supply chain works on timelines. Also, the businesses in Ottawa that lost business due to the blockades simply lost that money. It’s not like customers are just waiting for them to reopen so they can buy three weeks of backlogged lunches and dinners or products that they could have secured elsewhere in the interim. So that amounts to time and money simply lost that won’t come back. Getting an exact figure of the net deficit would probably be difficult, but we are talking many millions of dollars lost, potentially billions. Those aren’t necessarily the only negative impacts, but those are measurable losses.

* (And make no mistake: If you didn’t manufacture it yourself, it came from a store. And if it came from a store, it came from a truck. You don’t have to agree with anyone politically or religiously, but give wide berth to trucks and the humans who drive them.

The general perception is that roughly 90% of truckers in Canada do not support the convoy. I don’t know how that figure has been generated. It seems to be based on relevant professional associations making statements as well as the number of truckers who have been vaccinated and returned to work, though I don’t suspect either gives a clear number in reality. Still, many truckers don’t support the convoy, even if not 90% (or even 80 or 70 or 50%).

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